


Vision

by PictureMeBroken



Category: EXO (Band), f(x)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27115444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PictureMeBroken/pseuds/PictureMeBroken
Summary: ...a gas stove.Hissing fills the air, but no flames rise when he tests the first burner.Sehun turns all four knobs.
Relationships: Choi Jinri | Sulli/Kim Jongin | Kai, Choi Jinri | Sulli/Oh Sehun





	Vision

Slender fingers run through soft charcoal locks as the gentle sound of water rushing over rocks turned smooth over the years fills the air around them. It feels like they’ve been together only moments, but they’re time together grows short. Before long, the sweet touch of her hands on his body will fade and she’ll return to that world where everything is glitter and gold and the pedestal she’s been placed on soars higher than the stars. He intends to make the most of his time with her.

_The sound of fingers smashing harshly on frail keys fills the apartment. Sehun can’t take it anymore, the stress from work weighing down on him until it feels as though he’ll break at any moment. He stands, hands running through his hair and a sigh leaving his lips once his laptop’s been placed on the table beside him. Dark eyes roam to the picture frame on the table as his fingers press the screen of the computer closed. She looked beautiful that day, well, she looked beautiful any day, but **that** day she was stunning. Because **that** day, she still loved him. _

He sighs as the fingers massaging his scalp move lower, nails scraping across his spine and leaving tiny red marks as fleeting as his time with her.

“Sulli,” he whispers, lips barely moving against the sheet laid out underneath them. She hums from her position atop him and before he can stop himself silly words spill from his mouth like rain from the clouds. “Do you love me?”

She halts the circling of her fingers against tightly tensed muscles. “Do you love me, Kai?” she asks in return, waiting quietly for an answer that doesn’t come.

_The kitchen sink is clogged again. He sighs, debating on whether or not he wants to bother calling the service man when he could do it himself and save the poor man the trouble._

_He ends up unclogging it himself, shaking his head at the remnants of meals his wife had deemed unappealing and thrown out as he empties the trash himself as well. The maids scold him and he jokingly promises not to tell Jinri, faking a smile that he hasn’t felt in years for the old women’s sake._

“Did you know Krystal got a new girlfriend?” he asks, wishing that the water rushing around their legs could rinse away his earlier stupidity.

“Nope,” Sulli says. Her lips pop around the last syllable and he shakes his head, unable to keep a smile from his lips for reasons he can’t bear to voice. “I guess she isn’t taking your breakup too hard then.”

Kai merely shrugs, the women of his past the only comfortable topic he can think of around the woman that can’t be in his future. “She’s taking it better than Hyoyeon did. She ended up sleeping with her best friend and then breaking her heart.”

“Poor Sooyoung,” she sighs, already bored with the topic.

She fills the silence that follows with soft humming and he listens as if it were his final melody. He knows his time with her is getting smaller and smaller. He knows and he hates it.

_Sehun holds the key in his hand, running the pad of his thumb back and forth over it. It’s Jongin’s key; Sehun’s supposed to be taking care of the plants in his apartment while he’s away._

_It’s kind of funny, actually, how they’ve shared everything since university and even now, as anger and betrayal are burning in his throat, Jongin’s plants have been cared for as if they were a child that needed constant love and care._

Kai breathes out, hazy smoke flowing past his lips and hitting a wall of air before spiraling and billowing out in different directions. He watches as the smoke trails meet together once more before parting ways and fading away into nothing. If he were a more superstitious man, he might almost think it were the gods telling him exactly how this relationship would end.

Full lips wrap around colorful glass and as the smoke fills his lungs, Kai wonders if she’s ever noticed that his top lip is fuller, or that his chin has a small dimple.

She leans up as he leans down and their lips meet. Mouths open and she inhales, taking away his very essence and holding it in her lungs before turning skyward and blowing it away as if it were nothing.

Kai just smiles, but Jongin feels empty.

_Sehun scowls when he enters the apartment. It’s a one bedroom apartment with barely enough space for him to stand up straight and he wonders how Jongin lives here. It reeks of fake leather shoes and stale cigarettes and it’s a smell so Jongin that it almost masks the scent of fine jasmine perfume in the air. His throat’s tight as he shuts the door and bolts it behind him and for a moment he wonders how it would have turned out if things had been different; if Jongin had been the rich heir that Jinri’s parents approved of and he had been the lousy writer living paycheck to paycheck on minimum wage._

_He wonders and wonders, eventually sliding down the door to rest on the floor, but he knows that he’ll never get an answer for his questions._

_And even if he did, he wouldn’t like it._

Sulli laughs as Kai hides behind her, fingers clasping hers tightly. Kai can’t help but smile with her despite the geese running by. He’s always hated the birds and he doesn’t think anything will ever change that, but anytime he’s with Sulli, he just can’t seem to care about little things like that. He can only care about her smile.

_The kitchen is barely a kitchen, just two small counters, a refrigerator as old as its owner, and a gas stove._

_Hissing fills the air, but no flames rise when he tests the first burner._

_Sehun turns all four knobs._

“Are you ready to go home, princess?” he says, hoping only he can hear the crack in his voice.

She shakes her head, huddling closer to him and whispering in her ear. “Take me with you, Kai.”

_Sehun can remember the days when they first married. They were both freshman in university with different majors, but they loved each other despite it. They had never once thought about going against their parents’ wishes for them to marry, there was just no reason to when all four of them just wanted the same thing Jinri and Sehun did._

_Love was the warmth that filled every nook and cranny of the enormous apartment. It was the elegant food served on French glassware. Love was the air that they breathed._

_But now…_

_Their apartment is cold, their bellies empty, and Sehun is scrambling for the purchase in the ocean of despair that’s swallowed him whole and robbed him of breath._

_But Jinri can’t give him that air anymore without giving up her own._

Kai steps into the apartment first, stopping long enough to bend and pick Sulli up bridal style. She giggles and nuzzles into his neck and all of his worries just fade away.

It doesn’t matter if they don’t last or if no one will approve of their relationship, not to Jongin, who is completely and utterly in love with Choi Jinri.

He pulls out a cigarette once he sets her down and she hands him his lighter. He smiles, kissing her as thanks.

He raises the lighter to the end of his cigarette.

His finger hits the striker.

Sehun signs the papers willingly, giving Jinri a smile that he desperately wishes he felt. It’s not fair, that she gets to live happily with the man she loves, but he’s not going to try and stop her.

She and Jongin leave hand-in-hand and it breaks Sehun’s heart a little more. But then he looks at the smile on Jinri’s face, and honestly…

He’s happy he never went to Jongin’s apartment that day.


End file.
